SOUNDTRACK: CARM-Tiny Desk (Home) Concert #192 (April 15, 2021).
CJ Camerieri is a co-founder of yMusic, which is how I know him (I saw him perform with Ben Folds).
This is his new project, CARM. Camerieri is also a member of Paul Simon’s band, a collaborator with Bon Iver and a Tiny Desk alum. (You can hear his French horn with The Tallest Man On Earth from their 2019 Tiny Desk Concert.)
“Soft Night” is the first track and introduces us to what CARM is about. He plays trumpet while Trever Hagen plays electronics and sets up the melody and drums. Then Camerieri switches to French horn while Hagen plays some trumpet. Then in a fun moment, Camerieri picks up the trumpet with his right whole still holding the French horn in his left. He plays the trumpet melody and then puts down the trumpet and starts on the French horn. For the rest of this five-minute instrumental, the two jump back and forth playing trumpet riffs and leads as the electronics build satisfyingly.
For CJ Camerieri … home is where the art is. He performed his concert at the Pablo Center in Eau Claire, Wisc., where [he] conceived and recorded all the songs for his 2021 debut solo album, CARM. “This particular community has been a really big part of my musical life for 10 years,” CJ says after playing the calming tune “Soft Night,” “so it seems like the perfect place to be doing this.”
He made “Song of Trouble” with Sufjan Stevens. They wrote it before the pandemic but the lyrics have taken on new meaning. S. Carey plays piano and sings. This is another mellow song with some lovely muted trumpet and simple electronics backing the song.
“Nowhere” is a little stranger. It opens with jittery trumpet and skittery and loud electronics. The juxtaposition of the organic horns and the electronic instruments is very cool.
“Slantwise” opens with some rapid and wild drum loops. Then Camerieri loops the French horn and trumpet giving the song a rather majestic feel.
[READ: May 11, 2021] A Complicated Love Story Set in Space
The librarian in West Windsor recommended this book to my son. He didn’t read it, but I loved the title and was really interested in reading it.
And wow, did I enjoy it.
I have not read anything by Hutchinson before, so I’m not sure how this compares to his other books, but this was, indeed, a very complicated love story. In the acknowledgments Hutchinson says that originally the story was called Gays in Space. And while that is a fun title, I think the final title is wonderfully compelling.
The story opens on Noa. Noa is a normal teenager from Seattle. But he has just woken up and he finds himself in a spacesuit, floating outside of a spaceship. He has no recollection of how he got there. There’s a note that says “You are in space floating outside a ship called Qriosity. There is no reason to panic.”
Well, thank goodness for that.
After getting his bearings, a voice speaks to him. The voice is from a teenaged boy named DJ. DJ is from Florida and he is aboard the Qriosity. He also has no idea how he got there.
They are each tasked with a pressing problem and if they don’t fix them immediately, the ship will explode. Noa panics (as he tends to do) but DJ calms him and talks to him as they work together to fix the ship. Which they do. But as Noa is heading to the airlock, his tether is not attached and he is flung from the ship. He has nowhere near enough oxygen and soon enough, he is dead.
That’s a rough start for the protagonist of the story. (more…)
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